Fifteen years ago, a psychiatrist at the Student Counselling Services at Texas A&M University in College Station diagnosed me at the age of 20 with bipolar disorder. The revelation cast much of my life to that point in a new light. The diagnosis and the condition both color my perception of the world today.

With type II bipolar disorder, I experience multiple mood swings per year. I alter between soul-crushing depression and mind-racing mania. Some of my darkest times come when both part of the mood cycle hit me at once.

Many people misunderstand the nature of depression and mania. Many believe depression equals extreme sadness and moodiness while mania indicates a state of elation and joy. Caused by imbalances in my brain chemistry that cause neurons to fire differently, depression and mania encompass much more than simple sadness and happiness. Happiness and sadness represent feelings, emotions that can change from one moment to the next based on circumstances and environment. Mania and depression go deeper than that.

Psychiatrists and psychologists refer to mania and depression as moods and classify bipolar disorder with affective mood disorders because they alter moods in non-typical ways. The term mood indicates a long-lasting outlook on life that often lasts for weeks or months and changes with much less regularity than an emotion-of-the-moment. While circumstances certainly act as triggers for such moods, life’s vagaries often hold little relationship to the state of my moods. Depression lasts for months despite life going relatively well. Mania often generates an overly-confident, foolishly optimistic approach to the worst situations.

I possess a sharp mind, keen and analytical, witty and observant.

All of that changes when I cycle into depression or mania. My perceptions and memories of situations alter to the point that I recall situations radically different from other people and from what evidence supports. My mind fails to make the connections needed even for self-preservation. Only with intense focus can I overcome such memory blocks to remember the facts of a situation. However mood disorders affect other people, mine distorts my reality to the point that objective truth blurs with my desired truth.

If a person states what he or she believes as truth, even if it fails to match the facts or reality, do we call that person a liar? Do we call the falsehoods from that person’s mouth lies? When I misrepresent facts because I believe otherwise, I lack the intent of deception, the motivation to manipulate another’s thoughts or emotions. In truth, I deceive myself, trick my own consciousness into believing in a nonexistent reality.

Where does that leave me? What does that make me?

Crazy? Maybe. Dangerous? Perhaps. Blameless? No.

I accept responsibility for my life and my actions, regardless of intentions. I possess tools for coping with my condition, for managing the symptoms. When I use these tools to their fullest, I find myself in greater control of my thoughts, my life. However, the knowledge I possess of the existence of such tools brings with it the responsibility to use them.

Medication helps to a degree. Mileage varies no matter the dosage, and I find advantages and drawbacks at any level. It serves to regulate the chemistry of my brain and the firing of my neurons, keeping them sufficiently energized to avoid depression while regulating the speeds to avoid the manic states that give me as much or even more grief.

Talk therapy works to a point, discussing my moods and the problems they create with a trained professional who can instruct me in techniques to control and manage my moods and how I think and behave during major – and even minor – shifts.

Ultimately, though, the best anyone with bipolar disorder – or indeed with most any mental illness – management falls under the heading of “Best-Case Scenario.” No cures exist. No quick-fix solutions to make me, well, “normal.”

One of the truly great lines from Star Trek Generations (Paramount Pictures, 1994) asks what that means: “What’s normal? Well, that’s a good question. Normal is what everyone else is and you are not.”

I am not normal. I will never be normal. I don’t know that I would want to be “normal,” as such, average. I would give almost anything for my brain to function more normally, to be a little more controlled. I hate the lack of control.

I am not normal. I don’t know what I am. I often feel broken, uncertain, confused, paralyzed with fear. Michelle says I hide it well, but underneath the surface that I present, emotions and moods roil and rumble like a never-ending storm.

I have hurt people without intending to cause harm. I have deceived people because I believed every false thing that I said at the moment I said it. I have made terrible choices – and good choices – because I lack the same level of balance and stability in my brain that the average human possesses. My bipolar disorder explains many of my actions, but it does not excuse them.

What does that make me?

Am I a good man?